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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23418451">Younger than Yesterday</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifoughtadingoandwon/pseuds/ifoughtadingoandwon'>ifoughtadingoandwon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Minor Angst, Political Background Noise, Reconciliation</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 09:09:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,032</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23418451</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ifoughtadingoandwon/pseuds/ifoughtadingoandwon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Peacetime is a different beast from war--Robin and Chrom discover that together after it wedges them apart.</p><p>Set during the time-skip. Can be read as either romantic or platonic ᶦⁿ ᵗʰᶦˢ ʰᵒᵘˢᵉ ʷᵉ ˢᵗᵃⁿ ᵃᵐᵇᶦᵍᵘᶦᵗʸ</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Chrom &amp; My Unit | Reflet | Robin, Chrom/My Unit | Reflet | Robin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Younger than Yesterday</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He was more often than not in the gallery when she couldn’t find him in the barracks or his quarters. There was an eerie stillness to the scene she’d come to find familiar lately; winding vines in tapestries framing his figure, light bouncing off his armor onto the art, and his stare at the portrait unyielding. Had it not been for the shimmering of dust, it all could’ve been mistaken for a painting.</p><p>The clicking of her heels echoed through the vast room as Robin approached him. Chrom turned, his face softened and broke into a smile when he realized it was only her.</p><p>“Straight from the council meeting again, I see.” She jutted her chin in the direction of his breastplate.</p><p>“I’ve told Frederick I’d prefer to conduct them in regular clothing. He insists otherwise,” Chrom said, his last word stretching into a sigh.</p><p>“It pains me to say it, but he’s right this time. Decline your title and others use that as a pretense for dismissal. The armor says ‘king’, not ‘snotty nosed prince.’”</p><p>“You? Agreeing with Frederick? I’m not ill, am I?” A guile shined past the dark rimming his eyes.</p><p>Robin scrunched her nose and stuck her tongue out. “You can laugh all you want. Frederick only has the best intentions for you.” She added under her breath, “And he and I’ve agreed on things before. Seven times, at least…”</p><p>The clinking of plates in Chrom’s armor punctuated his laugh. It was a treasured sound that had grown warmer in its absence.</p><p>There had been weeks of Chrom being ferried between one assembly to another, surrounded by a gaggle of officials even Frederick couldn’t fend off with a stern look. Emmeryn’s advisors had taken to him in a flock, prodding at him to wed and begin his royal tour to boost morale. The young prince was scarcely out of his mourning dress before people he knew only by name and rank began planning his ceremonial wear to the last stitch.<br/>In all this flurry, Robin could only stand back and watch. The closest Robin had gotten to him was a distant hello or brief messages passed through successive Shepherds. Even meals did not spare them a moment as guests from all corners of the kingdom came to break bread and offer their sorrows. </p><p>She had thought to join the morning privy council, to be at his side like she had during war, but there had been no summons for her. To barge in would only make matters worse. Robin’s background hadn’t endeared her to the seats of council and nobles of the Halidom. During the war, few paid mind to her lack of past, for there were battles to be won and she was more than proficient at that. Now, she was too mysterious--an unknown factor could disrupt the delicate and preened balance of powers.</p><p>But in the gallery, the court didn’t exist. There were only paintings of long dead Exalts lining the room, with glossy eyes and faded half-smiles. Past glories and dragons woven into tapestries draped between busts of heroes of legend. Even the ceiling and walls were art themselves, stucco and marble reliefs carved into tendrils and flowers adorning them. Aside from history and the artists who memorialized it, they were utterly alone in the gallery.</p><hr/><p>Their first face-to-face conversation since Chrom’s accession--his head anointed only by oils, untouched by the crown--had been only two months ago.</p><p>“I didn’t take you for a lover of the arts, milord.” Her voice was stiff and wavered at his title, thrusted as an accusation. She didn’t mean to say it so loud, either. The last word echoed off the curved ceiling of the hall to burrow its way into the nooks and crannies of the decorated panels.</p><p>Chrom winced. “Robin, that’s the last thing I’d like to hear right now.” He stood, hands not knowing where to go, in the entranceway before approaching her. </p><p>Tension hung over them like a shroud, their silence doing nothing to nullify it.  Their first exchange in weeks and it had already turned sour.</p><p>She bit down an insincere apology. Robin stood from her stone seat on one of the central benches, carrying the pad of paper scribbled with various names and notes with her. She had been doing her best to remedy her ignorance.</p><p>“History lessons?” His question was cautious—a tone Chrom had not taken to yet, almost awkward on his tongue. It was a tool he would need to master, she knew, one of the many disguises to navigate as a king. The blunt, fiery young man. The courteous gentleman. The evasive politician. Just a few of the many to grace, to persuade.</p><p>For a moment, she wondered which face he had put on. But that uncertain tilt of his head—when he knew not what to say but only had the conviction to  help—was as genuine as the day they had defended Southtown.</p><p>Robin forced a smile. “Aye. It helps to put faces to names, you know? Hard to keep all these people and places in my head like Frederick wants, otherwise. Especially those with the same name. There’s at least six Marths in this room alone.” With the flick of a wrist, she pointed towards one of the older portraits; a surly looking man with a drunken flush across his nose and cheeks, and a mop of sandy hair on his head. “This one’s hair isn’t even blue!”</p><p>A laugh, one she hadn’t heard in so long.  It struck her just how much she had grown to miss that sound.</p><p>They shared a sheepish grin. Chrom said, “I’m surprised I wasn’t a Marth. My father had—”</p><p>“That’s him, right?” Robin cut him off, bright eyed, gesturing towards one of the more recent paintings. With the hues so vivid, it could only have been a couple decades old. “You look just like him. Even the nose is the same.”</p><p>He couldn’t hide the widened eyes fast enough. She was too hasty, too elated by their renewed rapport. It took a moment for all the lessons on contemporary Ylissean history to hit her square in the gut with a hammered fist.</p><p>“Chrom, I didn’t—”</p><p>“No, no. It’s fine.” He gazed at his father’s portrait before sighing. She hadn’t lied. The curve of the nose, the firmness behind the eyes, even their hair was the same shade of blue; the resemblance was unmistakable. The graying temples and waxed mustache were the only things that set them apart.</p><p>Robin slunk back to her seat, diverting her gaze when Chrom sat beside her. It was her turn to break the ice.</p><p>“Say, what were you doing here?” A strained effort, but one nonetheless.</p><p>“You’re right—I’m no art admirer.” Chrom laughed again, mostly at Robin’s distressed squirming, but then his gaze lowered and he wrung his hands. “I come here to get away. No one bothers to look for me in this hall. Few others come here. This wing is considered out of fashion; something to do with the architecture, I believe.”</p><p>“Your governess wouldn’t be happy to hear you’ve forgotten all those lessons on palatial design trends.”</p><p>“She would be glad I remember anything at all. Had I known how important even the most trivial details are as Exalt, I would’ve paid better attention. You know how the marquis of Powys refused to speak for half his time here?” The title conjured up narrow shoulders topped by a shiny bald head—that man had come to the capital in high spirits and left sour-mouthed two weeks later.</p><p>“What did you do?” She accused, sly-toothed.</p><p>“Well, I invited him to dinner. Things went well until I made a joke that not even the castle chefs could make peas palatable.”</p><p>“Oh, no.”</p><p>“As it would happen, Powys is famed for them. And all those peas I had pushed to the side of my plate? They had come from the bushel he brought with him as a gift.”</p><p>“There’s only one way out of that one, Chrom—order a bushel more for your personal meals. Two, if you <em> really </em> want to get back into his good graces.”</p><p>Chrom made a squeamish frown. “Just the thought of that is curdling. Funny as it is, it’s a mistake Emmeryn would’ve never made. She would have held a dinner, with those damned peas the star of every dish. Instead, I’ve made a muck out of it.” His grave sigh took all jest from the air around them. “It’s just… I’m so ill-prepared. So lacking. It’s hard to bear.”</p><p>Robin leaned in to catch his eyes. “You could have never anticipated this.”</p><p>“That’s the problem, isn’t it? I never thought I would rule. Maybe as a regent for a time or two. Maybe much later, in my twilight years… But this...” An anguish pleated his face as it had done during the war.</p><p>The first night of camp, after Emmeryn plummeted to the ground like a pale bird with a wayward arrow in its chest, Chrom remained in his blood-stained regalia. Sand fell out his seams and his eyes fixed only on the maps Robin laid down before him. She had laid a hand on his shoulder, asking him to rest. Chrom seemed to not hear. She watched him pull inwards, compressing himself into a small space out of grasp.</p><p>On the march he held his head high and his gaze was determined. Then he led them into battle against Mustafa, in the royal blues stained with blood once red. But all the colors—Chrom’s regalia, the sea greens of Nowi’s scales, the crimson banners emblazoned with the Feroxi sun—died drained by the merciless grey of rain.</p><p>It still lay raw in her mind. The rain had kissed her face with the warmth of blood. Far beyond Mustafa’s men was the promise of safety. Falchion swung in Chrom’s hands, pledged no longer to Emmeryn alone, but the realm too. Robin felt his will coursing through her, even as she collapsed into a slurry of bodies and wet earth towards the end.</p><p>Only after he had tucked Lissa into her blankets--the girl’s body feverish with despair--and left the Shepherds in Frederick’s safe-keeping, did Chrom retrieve that well of feelings, unspooling them in Robin’s tent.</p><p>Chrom was stripped of battle—of the mud, the blood, the adrenaline that made one ignore everything but the clash of steel and the drum of a mortal heart pounding against a ribcage. His eyes were red and swollen with unbidden tears and he pressed them downwards, away from her sight. But as he hunched over in his chair, she had seen the shuddering rise and fall of his back.</p><p>“I’m not a leader.” Each word had been a gasp, the panic of drowning.</p><p>“You’ve led us.” Robin was not yet out of her rift then, and she could only respond with a leadened mind and tongue.</p><p>Words came muffled through his hands. “But a realm—it asks too much. I’m not a man of the law nor was I taught matters of state. We all thought it sufficient to place a blade in my hands.” He choked out, “I was the spare.”</p><p>“There will be people to guide you.” </p><p>He bent his head up, his expression brittle. “They will think me a fool. Emmeryn was studious, wise beyond her years. And I’m… I’m a boy who can’t even stop breaking weapons.” His entire body rattled like trees beat by the wind.</p><p>All she could do was stare at him, sick as she was, and it ate at her, like a rat caught by its own tail.</p><p>Emmeryn was crowned at an age more tender. But he was still undoubtedly young. And he looked it, liberated from his armor and doublet.  Sweat-stained linens hung loose over his strong frame. From the ends of his sleeves and where his tunic dipped low, bruises bloomed sickly purples and greens. </p><p>Chrom was not the sentinel astride his courser, leading the charge with his blade outstretched. Had it not been for Falchion at his side, looking too cumbersome and heavy for his hands, she would have mistaken him for the weary boys that defended remnants of their villages with rusted pitchforks.</p><p>The anguish then had been of terror. It seized him again, this time with regret, inadequacy.</p><p>Robin gripped his shoulder. </p><p>She could feel the reprimanding stares of portraits dig into her, shushing her to preserve the silence. But Robin ignored them and spoke. “Policies, economics—all that will be learned in due time. But you saw how bandits and the Risen razed your people and lands. And how many Plegians had been silenced by the weight of Gangrel’s palm. You weren’t just a witness—you fought with us, starved with us, bled with us.” The pink that seeped out of his dressings came to mind. As did the hungry nights when the desert and ice curtailed the supply trains. “Those lessons… They’re not in any books.”</p><p>Chrom didn’t respond. He was fixed on his father’s likeness, a similar gaze staring back at him. Like two white doves, gloved hands perched above the frame--broad palmed akin to the bare hands that kneaded in worry to her side. But those hands, wrapped in lambskin, had led thousands to an almost certain death.</p><p>“You won’t be your father. Emmeryn would have made sure of that,” Robin added with a final, gentle squeeze before she drew back. It felt cheap, conjuring that name up. They both knew she had hardly known Emmeryn.</p><p>How futile, limpid her words seemed, trapped in his growing silence.</p><p>After a time, he began, slowly at first, “The kingdom is fortunate that a knucklehead like me has someone like you.”</p><p>“You forget I’m one, too. Two knuckleheads are certainly no smarter than one.” </p><p>At that, Chrom cracked a smile again. “It’s been too long since we’ve talked,” he said.</p><p>“Aye, it has.” There was more to say, but anymore would have unfairly burdened him with guilt.</p><p>He thwarted her, his voice already heavy with remorse. “I was hoping for all the fuss to settle down, for us to talk again. My apologies—”</p><p>“Stop. You have to attend to your duties. It’s only common sense.”</p><p>“No. I’ve failed you. I should’ve asked this before,” he looked at her with an intensity she was unprepared for, “Robin, I want you on my council. Formally.”</p><p>“That’s not a good idea.”</p><p>Chrom made a face. “Says who?”</p><p>“Anyone will tell you so. I’ve no title, no lands--off the battlefield, I’m as useful as a wheelbarrow at sea.”</p><p>“If you need a title or land, I will give them to you.”</p><p>“It’s not what <em> I </em> want, Chrom. I’ve just no precedent to be sitting alongside nobles and learned men. Appointing me a seat would only cast doubt on you.” Robin had already seen that doubt in sideways glances in the hallways.</p><p>“Then make them swallow their grievances. There’ll be no objections once they realize how brilliant you are.” He reached out a hand. His eyes warmed with trust. “And think of all the entertainment--between me sticking my foot in my mouth and insults tossed across the table, there’s no comedy troupe better.”</p><p>She hesitated. Murky waters churned before her. War was politics by other means—persuasion, after all, did only so much until foreign soldiers were at your doorstep—but every battle had a simplicity to it. The smell of blood stripped soldiers of desires for money or honor. All that remained was primal. The concern of survival.</p><p>Court would not have that cold, elegant clarity—lowly disputes snarled up its insides over land and wealth. The chronologies and annals could not hide that behind dry restraint. And the intricacies of law and alliances intimidated her with proof of her ignorance. Truly, it was terrifying.</p><p>But when she looked at Chrom, that fear seemed paltry. <em> Exalt </em> loomed above him, casting the shadows of Emmeryn and his father. He had no choice in that burden. He carried it alone. There was no need for a palm-reader to see the pleading all over Chrom’s outreached hand.</p><p>She grasped it.</p><p>“Are you sure?” </p><p>“Absolutely.”</p><hr/><p>In the days that had passed since they had made amends, Robin was proven right. Privy council had unearthed gaps in her knowledge that meticulous note-taking had not bridged. So much of it was vexing. How was the abundance of pasture troubling? And how was that a ripple left by the last king’s tempest? She knew little about the mines in Themis or the loyalty of the manors to the east. So far, her only contribution had been an apology to the treasurer, having stepped on her poulaine slippers. But Chrom had soothed her with his own humiliation afterwards. He, too, had trodden over those damned shoes’s pointed toes. If they were any longer, she’d have to hold them up by chain to walk, Chrom had jested.</p><p>Robin looked at him now, while his laughter subsided. She pulled out her notes. “Speaking of Frederick, he’ll have us quartered and drawn if we don’t go over today’s meeting.”</p><p>Chrom rolled his shoulders, still miserable in his armor. “If we must,” he lamented, as they sat at that same center bench again.</p><p>This had become their new routine. They would curl over parchment, maps, a heavy book. They would pace the long hall, monologuing to the other to test their comprehension on issues at hand. But often they’d find themselves in a fit of giggles over a cross-eyed dragon (more squat and dog-like than fierce) in a mural, or a buttocks peering out unashamedly in a noble’s portrait.</p><p>The paintings made the perfect audience--they did not heckle and complain. Even the facsimile of his father could not disrupt. The paintings looked on with unseeing eyes, non-judging of their clumsy jokes. </p><p>It was in those moments when Chrom did not have to be a leader, when his eyes twinkled with a boyish mischief, that stopped Robin from feeling drowned. In the gallery, they could titter and conspire, enveloped by the echoes of their warm laughs.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Man, I'm so fascinated with the growing pains of Robin shifting from war to peace-time and Chrom from Emmeryn's sword to monarch (it's why pretty much everything I write is centered around the time skip). Hah, it made me wish I understood the structure and function of royal institutions so I could do the idea justice.</p><p>Got a few thoughts on this:</p><p>-Love consuming platonic and romantic Chrobin, but I had intended to write them as platonic here. It sort of fell apart though, since I couldn't decide which of the Shepherds to write in as his wife. There's too many good Chrom pairings... It would've been awkward to evade specificities with "Chrom's wife" and variants--it's just so cold sounding, hah. So, yeah, the most elegant solution was to keep their relationship teetering on the edge of romance and friendship. </p><p>-The royal siblings' dad is SUCH an enigma. Gah, I hate how the game skirts around him. My personal headcanon is he basically annihilated a lot of the fighting age population with misguided or extremist war efforts. As a result, it caused a lot of the same issues as the Black Plague IRL, like shifts in labor and land distribution (a major simplification of my poor layman's understanding, hah).</p></blockquote></div></div>
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